Wabun Ahnung Ikwe Productions
Sacred Bundles Unborn acknowledges the voices of women who have come forward and recognizes that coerced forced sterilization is happening, while establishing a narrative on this critical issue as it is currently playing out in 2021, while educating people of the dark reality of Canada’s negligence of the human rights of Indigenous women and women of color, whom are at a greater risk within the health system in their most vulnerable state during pregnancy.
Each piece takes a unique approach to the many overlapping aspects informing this issue from the individual writer’s perspective, yet there is a thread of synergy between each piece. All are written in an accessible way as each author has eloquently and effectively spoken to the “unspoken” with integrity and grace, granting the reader as much ease as any human being can conceive in order to process this form of inhumane torture. All submissions are in the first person, whether a poem or narrative prose, in lay (non-academic) terms.
“The goal of our collective, first and foremost, is the documentation of this ongoing genocide, from our perspective, in order to bring to the forefront of readers’ consciousness this archaic and barbaric atrocity that continues and is not “criminalized” in Canada.” Morningstar Mercredi
Fire Keepers:
Yvonne Boyer
Morningstar Mercredi
Alisa Lombard
Karen Lawford
Ewan Affleck
Nathalie Pambrun and Cheryllee Bourgeois
Karen Stote
Keri Cheechoo
Gary Geddes
Genevieve Johnson-Smith
Bill Fairbairn
Victoria Saccsara Quispe
Alika Lafontaine
Jennifer Leason ~ Artist, Poet ~
Memoir - Finalist, First People's Publishing,
2006 Saskatchewan Book Awards
Morningstar Mercredi wrote her memoir as a form of activism to speak to the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women and men in Canada. Morningstar’s story, like thousands of Indigenous, Metis and Inuit people, describes how systemic racism, colonialism and apartheid affected her, as a mother she became determined to come to terms with her personal struggles only to realize how severely the historical influences impacted her family.
Morningstar takes the reader through her survival and aftermath of post trauma, as a result of the institutions mandated to ‘beat the Indian out’ of hundreds of thousands of children, as a day school survivor, Morningstar is adamant her ‘warrior spirit’ was not broken. She attributes this to her maternal lineage, her ‘grannies’ as well as the love of her ‘grandfathers’.
Morningstar understood she was traumatized by generational impact as well as being a day school survivor. Recounting sexual abuse, family violence, poverty, racism, and overcoming her own alcoholism, her inherent strength to survive a myriad of historical atrocities is notable. Historical atrocities, which to date, are affirmed as similar experiences within generations of Indigenous, Metis, and Inuit peoples throughout Canada, documented in the Truth and Reconciliation Report two decades after her memoir was published in 2006.
Matthew is twelve years old and lives in Saskatchewan, Canada. He is of mixed heritage: his mother is Dene Metis, and his father is English, Scottish, and Irish. Because his parents are divorced, Matthew spends one year with each of them in turn. This summer, his mother is taking him to Fort Chipewyan, the oldest settlement in western Canada, and the home of many Chipewyan, Cree, and Metis Indigenous people. Since Matthew was raised in the city, this will be his first time participating in some of the traditional Native activities, such as smoking and drying fish. During his time at Fort Chipewyan, Matthew meets many of his relations, joins in a Dene drum dance, and gets a pair of beautiful moccasins made for him by a talented beadworker. He also learns a little about what it's like to live off the land.
Fort Chipewyan Homecoming, finalist in the Silver Birch young reader's choice award in Ontario.
Poetry by Morningstar Mercredi, Volume V Gatherings
'Northern Wind Song' and 'Long Wind Walk'